ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Maverick McNealy has long had a deal with his grandmother, Marm, that every time he cashes a tournament check of more than $50,000, he has to send her flowers. For each top 10 finish, Marm also gets a box of chocolates.
But now McNealy had to up the ante, admitting: “I should probably give her something extra special.”
That’s because McNealy, 29, is now a PGA Tour winner, his breakthrough one-shot victory on Sunday at the RSM ClassicSeven years after the former top amateur flirted with life as a career entrepreneur just to give professional golf his best shot.
What a decision it turned out to be.
“Honestly, my mind is blank,” McNealy said nearly an hour after his winning putt on the 72nd hole. “It was an incredible adrenaline rush there.”
Adequate considering the journey he took.
McNealy was once a hockey player who dabbled in golf and rarely played outside his region. But he knew his lanky frame wasn’t built for college hockey, and as a Stanford commit, he verbally committed to his hometown Cardinal as a golfer his junior year of high school. He was the third piece in a stellar 2013 recruiting class that also included U.S. Junior champion Jim Liu and international prodigy Viraat Badhwar, so much so that he often joked that head coach Conrad Ray’s trio of signees had three No. 1s — Number 1 in America, Number 1 in Australia and Number 1 in Portola Valley.
Still, it was McNealy who racked up the accolades — 11 college wins, tying the school record shared by Tiger Woods and Patrick Rodgers; two participations in the Walker Cup; the best amateur in the world.
“I didn’t have any expectations of myself and everything just seemed to happen by accident,” McNealy said. “It came really easily and it took me a bit by surprise to be honest.
McNealy always dreamed of playing for Stanford, but then thought he would dive into the corporate world like his father, Scott, a billionaire tech mogul who made Sun Microsystems famous, which he later sold to Microsoft. McNealy’s decision like LeBron James was highly anticipated, but when he finally chose professional golf, he was all in.
“The way I look at it is I’m jumping off a cliff right now … and there’s no looking back and there’s no second guessing,” McNealy said the day he turned pro in 2017.
A year later, McNealy was subjected to what remains his greatest test to this day. McNealy, a newcomer to the Korn Ferry Tour, developed full-swing yips. He couldn’t play nine holes at TPC Summerlin, his home course in Las Vegas, without going through a dozen golf balls. It was so debilitating that McNealy phoned his caddy Travis McAllister at the time to say he would miss the KFT Finals event in Columbus, Ohio.
What happened next was potentially a career turning point.
“One of the most important phone calls of my life,” McNealy explained. “He told me, ‘Get your butt on the plane and we’ll figure it out.’ I went out there, hit it 50 yards right off the first tee and we kind of knocked it out.”
McNealy earned his PGA Tour card next season — and he’s not giving it up just yet. In his first three seasons, he posted nine top 10s, including several second-place finishes, and never finished worse than 68th in the FedExCup points standings. Sure, victory eluded him, but given his pedigree, it seemed only a matter of time.
Then he hurt his shoulder.
McNealy tore his left anterior sternoclavicular bone in February 2023, an injury that sidelined him for six months, required regenerative stem cell treatment and forced him to undergo a major medical extension this year. Many professionals would be left devastated or at least discouraged. But Joseph Bramlett, McNealy’s best friend on the PGA Tour, remembers, even in the early days of McNealy’s rehabilitation, an inspirationally determined McNealy.
“As he does with anything,” Bramlett said, “he kept pushing, kept working, did all the right things. … He made the most of it.”
Or ever? While he was gone, McNealy polished his pilot’s license and met his wife, Maya, who worked at the facility where McNealy received physical therapy. The couple ran away last December 6. McNealy also reworked his swing, flipping his swing path to the left and taking pressure off his body.
“I never lost faith that I would come back better than ever,” McNealy said.
He just never expected it to all click, of all weeks, this one.
The seaside course at Sea Island Golf Club is not for McNealy because it has smooth Bermuda greens and requires accurate iron play. McNealy joked earlier in the week that the only reason he even signed up for RSM was because Maya loves Lodge milk and cookies. But the truth is, McNealy wanted to challenge himself, and having already secured his place in the top 60 of the FedExCup — and placed in the first two events of next season — he had a free throw.
He also took the opportunity to introduce a new Titleist golf ball and flew it well in cold and windy conditions on Friday, backing up an opening 62 with a gutsy 70 to stay in the hunt. The next day, McNealy grabbed a share of the 54-hole lead for just the second time in his career, and in Sunday’s final three-way match, he earned a tee time alongside co-leader Vince Whaley and Daniel Berger, who three years ago at Pebble Beach denied McNealy perhaps his greatest chance to become with the PGA Tour winner.
One of McNealy’s greatest strengths is that he rarely gets impatient. He says he was prepared for his first pro win to take 10, maybe 15 years. But he’s not perfect either. McNealy recalled a conversation with Maya earlier in the fall in which he expressed his frustration at not getting the most out of his game.
Maya replied: “If you knew you were going to win in six weeks, would you have done anything differently?”
McNealy conceded, “Probably not.”
That was six weeks ago.
McNealy built a two-shot lead on Sunday before watching it evaporate. And a bogey on the par-4 14th pushed McNealy into the chasing pack, behind amateur Luke Clanton and red-hot Nic Echavarria, who had already won this fall. Suddenly, McNealy looked like he was on his way to adding to his $10 million and winless streak. However, Clanton and Echavarria bogeyed the final par-4 hole and went into the clubhouse at 15 under, tied with McNealy and Berger with two holes to go.
That’s when McNealy’s brother, Scout, stepped in. Scout, the youngest of four McNealy boys, jumped on the Maverick bag before the FedExCup playoffs and quit his real estate job until the end of the year. Scout’s great strength as a caddy is its carefree nature, and as McNealy prepared to make an 11-foot birdie on the par-3 17th, Scout, as he has done all fall, took the opportunity for another joke.
Maverick declined to say what exactly was said, calling it unfit for work. Scout wouldn’t divulge either, but explained that the week was full of pranks, like getting applesauce all over a yardage book and his brother’s golf bag. Classic scout.
“I try to make him smile and laugh,” Scout said, “and when he’s playing like he is, it’s easy.”
A hole late, Maverick stuffed his 195-yard approach shot to 6 feet with a 6-iron from a new TaylorMade set that McAllister volleyed before landing at McNealy’s door. After a failed birdie attempt by Berger, McNealy stepped up and sunk the dagger for birdie.
Moments later, Scout, still holding the flag, hugged Maverick and excitedly yelled, “Maui, baby!” With his win, McNealy, now a career-best 31st in the world, earned an invitation to next year’s Sentry and big starts at the Masters and PGA Championship; Scout will be next for those who accepted the full-time gig a few weeks ago in Japan.
Bramlett has known McNealy for decades, when Maverick was a fearless high schooler who challenged Stanford players to chipping contests, and he had no doubt McNealy would make that game-winning putt. He calls McNealy one of the best putters in the world, something McNealy did last year when he led the PGA Tour in strokes gained: putting. McNealy’s not a bad coach either, helping Bramlett on the greens this year, all while balancing life as a newlywed, playing medicine and getting involved in PGA Tour politics; McNealy’s analysis of the current FedExCup points structure led the PGA Tour to correct some of the deficiencies for next season.
“He’s incredibly caring about the people around him,” Scout said of Maverick, who is known for sending handwritten notes to sponsors, tournament organizers and even members of the media each offseason.
McNealy’s latest act of kindness came on Saturday night when he said of Bramlett, who has been fighting to keep his card this week, “I would trade 100 trophies to have him on the PGA Tour next year.”
“Mav is the best person,” Bramlett said. “Everything he does as a human being is the best. He cares about me a lot. I care about him a lot. I’m really happy for him.”
So even after losing his full status, Bramlett was greenside at the 18th to watch McNealy lift his first PGA Tour trophy into a cloudless blue sky. Bramlett was joined by Maya, Scout and one of McNealy’s other brothers, Dakota, plus McNealy’s longtime agent Peter Webb, who had flown in from Nashville just hours earlier. Maya’s job on Sunday was to have McNealy’s parents on speed dial in case McNealy finished work.
McNealy’s mom, Susan, couldn’t stop crying. Scott couldn’t stop smiling.
It was Scott McNealy who first instilled the importance of the team in Maverick, who famously shared a room with all four of his brothers growing up, one wall lined with twin beds. Now, McNealy thanked the team, which has grown significantly behind his family and includes more than a dozen people, from executive staff to sales staff.
This victory was not accidental.
Every member of the Mav team played a role in Sunday’s breakthrough, so according to McNealy, this trophy was for everyone.
But it would look best on his grandmother’s mantelpiece.